Why You Should Integrate Your Inventory Management System with Your Back-Office System

Inventory management is about knowing the level of stock you have in your warehouse. Nonetheless, your stock control software alone can’t streamline your processes unless it’s integrated with your accounting and back-office systems. It also can’t ensure that the inventory value on your financial reports matches the value of the physical inventory.

Today’s companies integrate their stock control systems with their accounting and back-office operations to optimize inventory management. Integration minimizes labor cost, provide a competitive edge, and minimize errors associated with manual reconciliation. It requires a business to assess its needs and future growth plan for it to determine the right medical inventory management software. Your integrated medical inventory management software must be scalable, transparent, real-time, reconcilable, and flexible for you to achieve maximum benefits.

Why Integrate your Inventory Management System with Your Accounting and Back Office Processes?

Integrating your stock control system with your back-office and accounting systems results in three key benefits. These three integration benefits can impact your bottom line significantly.

Accurate Financial Reports

Maintaining accurate tax returns and annual reports is crucial for your investors and government. The value of the physical assets in your warehouse must match the recorded value in your books. By integrating the transactions in your inventory system, you ensure financial integrity in your company reporting.

Inventory Optimization

Having the right mix and adequate inventory is essential for customers’ satisfaction. Activities such as counting, reworking, and storing reduce the availability of products that your customers’ demand. Your inventory management system needs to have a real-time visibility of your inventory to ensure that you have adequate and the right mix of stock.

Supply Chain Visibility

Today’s companies manage their stock levels and distribute their products through supply chain partners. They not only integrate their inventory systems with the company’s back-office systems but also with third-party logistics and suppliers systems. By integrating your system with those of your suppliers, you ensure that your inventory levels don’t fluctuate.

The Importance of Integration

The integration of your system must be real-time, scalable, transparent, and flexible. Real-time data enhances visibility to your supply chain partners and customers. That ensures that your financial reporting is accurate and up-to-date. Customers and supply chain partners want the integration to be scalable and flexible, as continuous growth could require your business processes to adjust to the integration. Many companies often forget about scalability during the integration design. That will come back to haunt you when high transaction volumes overwhelm your company’s success.

The easiest way to integrate your systems is to incorporate an inventory management module and ERP system that meets your needs. You could also look for an ERP system and inventory management system that was designed with flexible APIs. Alternatively, you can still integrate your system if it doesn’t match with systems with open and flexible APIs. However, your system will require constant maintenance as the provider upgrades the solutions. You could also update and reconcile your systems manually to keep various systems in synch.… READ MORE ...

Technology’s Effect in the Modern Business World

Technology is at the heart of all innovation, and the effect is more profound in business. Right from having systems that reduce the workload and almost eliminating paperwork, entrepreneurs will benefit greatly from incorporating technology in their business practices. In this guide, we look at the effects of technology in business.

Reduction in the Cost of Doing Business

The logistics of maintaining a business always run high before it can be clear from the red. According to a study on the performance of new businesses started in the last decade, only 50% of businesses make it through the first year, and less than 25% of the remaining make it to the 10th year mark. The entrepreneurs who get their businesses past the 10-year mark have one thing in common; they reduce their overhead costs by incorporating technology into their business practices.

Streamlined Processes

Wages take up almost 50% of the money made by a business, and businesses need to set aside as much money as possible for product and service development as well as customer acquisition. Systems have made this a reality reducing the number of people that need to work in various departments to make the business success. More so, they reduce the output time ensuring fast and accurate results.

The Power of the World Wide Web

The internet is one of the most crucial technologies to leave a mark in the business world. Entrepreneurs today use it to outsource various services such as administration, content marketing, hiring, and accounting. This leaves them enough time to concentrate on brand growth.

Improved Customer Service

Advancement in the technology has allowed the development of systems and web applications that assist customers in getting the information they want. Artificial intelligence has allowed for chat boxes on websites and apps to remember past conversations and this has allowed the provision of quick responses to the questions that the customers ask regarding your products and services. This has been a significant factor in customer acquisition and retention.

Faster Conversion Rates

In the digital business environment, hardly will the customer meet physically with the face behind the business as it was in the ancient times. The modern customer knows what they want, and it only takes a few clicks on their devices to make a buying decision. The systems in place can upload all the information a prospective client wants to make a purchasing decision in real time. This fast tracks the process where a browser becomes a paying customer. It does not matter if you have the best product or service; if you lack technology, the customers will simply not notice you. CRM integration is one such technology that makes customer conversion and retention much easier and faster.

Easier Work Order Management

Presently, it is not necessary that all your employees and contractors report to the office unless necessary. Various systems allow the personnel in the office to monitor the field operatives. Depending on the technology in place, you can ensure that all … READ MORE ...

The Benefits of Hosted Solutions for Business

Although cloud-accounting has been around for some time now, some entrepreneurs have not yet fully embraced the idea of taking their data to the cloud. Thanks to applications like QuickBooks, cloud-accounting makes it possible for entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses. To help you understand how, here are a few of the benefits offered.

Reduced costs

Cloud-based solutions can help bring your business resources together, allowing these to be reallocated or shared as needed to more of your employees and clients at a cheaper cost than what it would take to build and maintain your own server. Additionally, your vendor will manage the storage, connectivity, licenses and servers, reducing the level of administration required to do so onsite.

Scalability

Hosted service providers usually have a utility pricing structure that makes it easy for businesses to add licenses and users when needed and reduce the user count when said licenses are not needed. When considering a merger, this level of scalability might be invaluable because it allows a lot of users to be the incorporated into a firm’s hosted applications on short notice, ensuring faster integration into the company’s operating environment.

Managed cash flow

For access, most hosted services will charge the user a fixed monthly fee. Businesses can, therefore, manage their cash flow better, which, in turn, allows them to simplify their budgeting processes. As a result, companies will not pay for anything other than the services used, reducing capital expenditures.

Increased mobility

When using a hosted solution, you will no longer be tied to the firm’s computer. As long as there is a working internet connection, users can use a variety of devices to access hosted applications from any location. On the user’s tablet, smartphone, or home PC, cloud-accounting solutions can be accessed through browsers or mobile apps. As a result, businesses can promote flex time and remote operations, both of which can help improve productivity. With increased accessibility and mobility, companies can retain the services of employees who move away, a practice that might, in the long run, help them create global platforms for business operations.

Collaboration made easy

With hosted applications, entrepreneurs and business managers can access the required information at all times, which makes it easier to collaborate regardless of whether they are in the office, at home, or on the go. Some businesses are yet to incorporate cloud-accounting solutions, as a result of which their managers will spend a significant amount of time chasing down answers and documents from their clients. Business owners can leverage cloud-based solutions to centralize their key financial documents automatically. Apart from reducing the friction of auditing a firm’s books, it will make collaboration easier. Remote accessibility means that bookkeepers and accountants will have the necessary documents when they need them, allowing better management of time.

Conclusion

Hosted solutions usually have IT personnel teams charged with monitoring network performance and system trends, focusing on enterprise tools and security. As a result, such providers will have several data centers where … READ MORE ...

Three Important Reasons Why Building Quality Backlinks to Your Website Is Crucial in Today’s Competitive Online Market

While there are many different factors that help a website to rank well in Google, building solid backlinks remains the number one way to boost your search engine position. It’s also the best way to drive targeted traffic to your site. Below are five reasons that your website needs to have backlinks pointing to it.

#1. Domain and Page Authority

The more high-quality links a page on your website has, the its page authority will be. This also extends to your entire website in that the more quality links it has, in total, the higher its domain authority will be. These two factors help to determine how high a page on your website will rank in Google. The higher the page authority, the higher that single page will rank, and the higher your domain authority is will affect the chances that any page on your website has to rank higher in Google. Since higher rankings mean more traffic to your website, there is no excuse to not begin building quality backlinks to your site, today. You can navigate here to discover more about the types of link building strategies that work.

#2. Your Brand Is Important

High quality websites that link to your website are giving their readers an indication that they agree with what is on your website. But you can take this a step further and publish guest posts on other websites that not only will link to yours, but that will also help your brand to look better. After reading quality guest posts that you’ve written, people will be more inclined to come on over and check out what you have to offer. This scenario is a win-win for you and your website, because on top of a backlink that may drive your search ranking up, you will also receive direct traffic and a boost to the authority of your brand. Since brand signals make up a decent portion of Google’s many ranking factors, it is pretty important to build yours up.

#3. You Will Get More Referral Traffic

As mentioned in the previous section, backlinks can bring some people directly to your website. Too many website owners get lost in the hunt for backlinks that will raise their authority when the other point of focus should always be on building backlinks that will bring immediate traffic to their site. This is especially true in today’s world as the traffic that comes from search engines represents roughly 47% of all of the traffic that will come to your website. Is this a large chunk of the total amount? Yes. But that still leaves 53% of the rest of your traffic, which comes from other sources, including direct clicks on the backlinks that you or your digital marketing agency has worked hard to build.

Conclusion

If getting traffic to your website is important to you, and it should be, then you will want to ensure that you are doing something to build backlinks to your website. In … READ MORE ...

Here’s Why Your Business Needs Parcel Forwarding Services

Shipping trade is one of the oldest industries around the globe. In today’s contemporary world, shipping interconnects markets, countries, people, and businesses hence permitting the buying and selling of goods and services on scales never experienced before. That said, the global economy largely depends on shipping – exports and imports would not exist without shipping.

This concept tells you that the maritime industry still is, and remains one the most important sectors in the world. Over time, technology advances have improved shipping by providing over the air services which has done away with snail-speed package forwarding services.

How Parcel Forwarding Services Work

Do you require parcel forwarding services for your business? You can start by obtaining a shipping address from a shipping services provider. You then create either a standard or premium account with the company. Shop for goods and services at any place of your choice globally – talk of variety – and ask the seller to ship your goods to the forwarding company.

Your package is received by the forwarding company who takes care of consolidation, storage, and repackaging if necessary. After you have cleared your shipping costs, the company forwards your package to your doorstep. You can choose to ship your package right away or even have the shipping business hold your package for you for a few days. If you have shopped for different products in separate locations, no stress – you can wait until all your packages arrive at the forwarding company before shipment.

Benefits of Modern Parcel Forwarding Services

There exist several benefits of using parcel forwarding services for your business. Here are three advantages why your business needs, and should consider package forwarding services.

  • International trade – with parcel forwarding your business will not be limited to local goods and services only. You can buy products and services from all over the world. Your business can make deals and send and receive products from locations that were otherwise impossible before, which enhances your business operations and eventually increases productivity.
  • Customs clearance – with parcel forwarding, the shipping company takes care of customs requirements for your business hence eliminating all the stress that comes with customs requirements.
  • Packaging and repackaging – as a business person, you understand packaging can be demanding. Many times, packages arrive from diverse sources and may require international packaging and repackaging standards. Some parcels may get damaged or somehow under-insulated. Package forwarding services, therefore, help with standard international packaging. Additional benefits include reduced shipping charges, insurance benefits, parcel storage, and concierge services.

Global trade continues to progressively advance with organizations having the capability to import and export goods and services from anywhere in the world. Several factors have led to the development of parcel forwarding services. The development of e-commerce business systems is one of the driving force that is fueling shipping services. Additionally, the desire for shoppers in one country to buy products and services from other nations is fulfilled. Different price variations between international stores as well as … READ MORE ...